alytic organization, his “second home,” as he once put it, if he persisted in following
the direction he believed his work was taking him.
His marriage was also running into trouble. Like his career, it was in many
respects quite successful; but Annie did not share Reich’s emphasis on genitality, and it
was characteristic of Reich to want those close to him to be fully involved in whatev-
er occupied him. Several years later, Reich was bitterly critical of the institution of
“lifelong, compulsive monogamy,” partly on the grounds that a partner chosen in one’s
twenties may be incompatible with one’s psychic development at thirty.^7 It is clear that
when he formulated this criticism, he had his own experiences much in mind.
The weight of all these varied concerns is reflected in photos of Reich from
the time. The photo carrying the inscription “Conflict with Freud” shows a brooding
man—the depth of the hurt is striking. Another picture from Davos shows him stand-
ing on the snowy steps in front of the sanatarium, his legs in a wide stance, hands on
hips, the look still hurt and angry but also determined, as if to say: I will be my own
man, no matter what.
It was during the sanatarium stay that Reich began a custom he was to contin-
ue throughout his life—that of sending pictures of himself to absent friends. In
Vienna,Grete Bibring received one from Davos that bore the inscription: “So that you
will recognize me.” Reflecting on Reich many years later, she saw a biblical reference in
that inscription and cited it as evidence of Reich’s incipient psychotic megalomania, A
more benign interpretation might regard it as a half-ironic reference to his literal
absence and to their drifting apart as friends, something that was indeed happening
during this period.
There is no doubt that at Davos Reich was taking himself more seriously than
ever. From that time on, he saw himself as living or wanting to live a heroic destiny.
And from that time on, he had a sense of his remarkable powers. He recorded his life
in voluminous detail, keeping careful notes and diaries of his intellectual and personal
development.To a high degree he had that “fierce love of one’s own personality” that
Isak Dinesen noted as a hallmark ofthe creative individual.
The sense of himself as a remarkable person, perhaps a historic figure, was
Heightened—I am suggesting—during Reich’s stay at Davos. His daughter, Eva,
thought that this was the time he “found out who he was.”^8 Even those who deplored
the kind ofperson he found himself to be and the kind of person he became saw the
sanatarium period as critical. Annie Reich believed that before Davos, Reich had been
an essentially “normal”person, whatever difficulties there may have been. After it, she
felt he became a much angrier, more suspicious individual, and, indeed, that a psychot-
ic process dated from that Time^9 .Which of these two opinions—that of his daugh-
ter or his first wife one prefers, or which blend of the two, depends on how one views
his later development.
Reich rested at Davos, but he also worked. One task was going over the proofs
of Die Funktion des Orgasmus.The last chapter of the manuscript was entitled “The
9 : Reich’s Illness and Sanatarium Stay in Davos, Switzerland: Winter 1927 117